Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

Unlike many who have spoken today, I met Lady Thatcher only once, but I was nevertheless touched by her unique blend of resolve and kindness. She wrote to me after the last election, as she wrote to many of my new colleagues, urging us to

“carry the fight to our opponents whenever the time comes”.

Her twilight years never dimmed that most tenacious of spirits.

Of course she had her critics and her enemies—did anyone ever get anything done without them?—but this was a woman who won three elections by appealing across tribal political divides and across society. For me, what stands out about her legacy is the fact that she was an underdog fighting for the underdog. Yes, she was renowned for her economic leadership; yes, she reminds us today that we have a choice, and that if we rise to the challenge, our better days lie ahead and not behind us; but she would never have held office for so long had she not carried people with her.

She may have caused division within the Westminster village, but in the country, because of her, 6 million took a stake in British businesses, and 1 million bought their council homes. For many more—including refugees like my father, who came here with nothing—she nurtured the flicker of aspiration, inspiring people, regardless of their background, to believe that as a result of hard work, their dreams of prosperity and a better quality of life lay within their grasp. That message resonated not just in Britain, but around the world. As cold war historian John Lewis Gaddis has observed,

“It was a blow for Marxism, for if capitalism really did exploit the masses, why did so many among them cheer the ‘iron lady’?”

She was fired by a moral clarity that drove decisive action against perilous odds. We think of the Iranian embassy siege, and of the Falklands. Her most basic insight on Europe, shortly after she took office, remains prescient. She said:

“We believe in a free Europe, not a standardised Europe. Diminish that variety within the member states, and you impoverish the whole community.”

That neatly sums up the malaise that afflicts the European Union today.

As others have said, Margaret Thatcher made the political weather. She forged a new consensus. That is why, after the 1997 election, the cover of Time magazine pronounced her legacy the real winner. That is why Tony Blair wrote in his memoirs:

“Mrs Thatcher was absolutely on the side of history…in recognising that as people became more prosperous, they wanted the freedom to spend their money as they chose; and they didn’t want a big state getting in the way of that liberation by suffocating people in uniformity, in the drabness and dullness of the state monopoly… Anything else was to ignore human nature.”

When Caesar learnt of Mark Antony’s death, he lamented:

“The breaking of so great a thing should make

A greater crack”.

Today, we ensure that the passing of so great a statesman echoes from this Chamber. Margaret Thatcher was the ultimate conviction politician: our greatest peacetime leader.